create-react-app-django VS Next.js

Yes. I have large portions of a server-rendered, stateful web application that leverages django’s view/templating.

However, being new to React I wanted to bring a single react “app” into the django project using a django template that includes the use of the same navbar template used by every other page in the site.

While it doesn’t support N react apps bundles at this time I could see it being done provided they share a single package file.

One important point for me was that this also be done using an unejected base CRA project, so that it would enjoy all of the benefits of the CRA standard dev and production build capabilities.

This was no small feat because I’m relatively new to modern web front end toolchains and in fact I ended up rewriting almost all of the user documentation for CRACO as part of my learning process.

Which is a key point I was able to accomplish this by using a mix of CRACO and options available to a standard CRA application.

In particular the package.json postbuild script action which moves and renames files to nestle assets into their proper place in a django static path.

I have not released my solution but I have stubbed out the problem and solution description here: https://github.com/banagale/create-react-app-django

Vite and Next.js are both top 5 modern development framework right now. They are both great depending on your use case so we’ll discuss 4 areas: Architecture, main features, developer experience and production readiness. After learning about these we’ll have a better idea of which one is best for your project.

> It’s important to be aware of what you are getting if you go with React, and what you are getting is a far cry from what a framework would offer, with all the corresponding pros and cons.

Would you like to elaborate on that?

In my experience, with something as great, size/ecosystem-wise as React, there will almost always be at least one "mainstream" package for whatever you might want to do with it, that integrates pretty well. Where a lot of things might come out of the box with a framework, with a library I often find myself just needing to install the "right" package, and from there it's pretty much the same.

For example, using https://angular.io/guide/i18n-overview or installing and using https://react.i18next.com/

Or something like https://angular.io/guide/form-validation out of the box, vs installing and using https://formik.org/

Or perhaps https://angular.io/guide/router vs https://reactrouter.com/en/main

Even adding something that's not there out of the box is pretty much the same, like https://primeng.org/ or https://primereact.org/

React will typically have more fragmentation and therefore also choice, but I don't see those two experiences as that different. Updates and version management/supply chain will inevitably be more of a mess with the library, admittedly.

Now, projects like Next https://nextjs.org/ exist and add what some might regard as the missing pieces and work well if you want something opinionated and with lots of features out of the box, but a lot of those features (like SSR) are actually pretty advanced and not always even necessary.

Next.js: For the website and the admin dashboard

Until the time of writing, there is no official example of how to enable runtime environmental variables in a Dockerized Next.js app, as utilizing unstable_noStore would only dynamically evaluate variables on the server (node.js runtime). There is also an interesting discussion regarding this topic on GitHub.

next.js is a very popular React framework. remix-adonisjs includes more functionality through the AdonisJS backend ecosystem, and should be easier to self-host and self-manage.

Cheryl Murphy is not only a dedicated full-stack web developer skilled in technologies like React, Next.js, and NestJs but also a community-driven professional who recently took on the role of volunteer project team lead at Web Dev Path. With a dual Bachelor's degree in Computing and Chemical Engineering from Monash University, Cheryl’s journey in tech is marked by a passion for building accessible solutions and a commitment to fostering community within tech.

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Remember to start the Next.js server with pnpm dev.